Howdy Partners #75: Prioritizing Operations or Relationships? Striking the Balance in Partnerships with Coriena Hipple Merejo
Coriena Hipple Merejo shares her experience in managing relationships and operations, emphasizing clear communication and active listening.
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[Music]
Howdy Partners and welcome to another episode of the Howdy Partners podcast
where we give you
tactical insights so that you can have better partnerships. Today we're going
to be talking
about the topic of striking a balance between having relationships with your
partners and also
having the proper operations in place so that you are generating revenue. There
's a narrative in
the market that there are two types of partner people. One is the relationship
type and the other
is the operations type. Luckily today we have an expert in both and so without
further ado I am
joined with Karina Hippel-Mareo who comes from Pipetrive and a background in
customer success
and customer service so she not only has the expertise in managing
relationships but in her
previous role at Pipetrive she also ran the operations. Karina why don't you
introduce yourself
and tell the audience more about who you are and why this topic is important to
you. Thank you Will
for this opportunity really looking forward to diving into this subject and I'm
pretty passionate
about it because you can't have one without the other. If you have great
relationships but the
operations don't support and vice versa and how that came to me was I started
out in call centers
early stages of my career and came across the friction of when operations does
not work.
That comes out in the customer interactions it comes out with your your CSRs
that are taking the call
right so as a people person I wanted my team to enjoy their work feel good
about their work and
be able to do their best work so that's when I started diving into operations
and once you go
down that route it's like you know you start getting involved in projects and I
found that you know
that I loved doing them both because a good running operation allows you then
to more you know to
focus on the relationships which are the reason why we're doing any job that we
're doing is about
the people. I love it and one of the things that I've thought about along that
same vein is the
best partner people are project managers because project managers they are able
to clearly identify
what needs to be done who needs to do them you know they have the operation
side but what I think
the claim to that being so important for partner people is the fact that it is
clear communication
and I'm a big believer that if you are clearly communicating something then
that means people
on the other side will better understand it and more easily receive it and you
do them a service by
respecting their time and energy and efforts by organizing this information
alongside them and so
what was I'm curious you mentioned you know having that experience where you
then decided I'm going
to take this on what was the impact of that you know you mentioned having
people enjoy the work
that they do what do you have any like metric impacts or even some anecdotal
impacts on
how this realization then impacted the the team and the overall business sure
the first like I'll
say notable I was working at a student loan call center and what would happen
is you know we'd all
be part of the hiring process of bringing in new phone reps but you wouldn't
know like who would be
on your team until after they'd gone through training and been assigned and we
were finding that
you know it was an intense training so six weeks of just all this information
and then it's like
get on the phones and these people were not they weren't ready they it just
they just weren't ready
to do it so I started diving into the why they weren't ready and I pitched a
transition program
right so basically they would come out of training beyond the floor and I was
the transition manager
and they were doing the job but we would have intervals throughout the day
where we would stop
and talk about certain topics and there was a curriculum around it and
basically we increased
retention by about 25% because there was such a high turnover of people coming
in and filling
overwhelmed so we increased the retention and then also reduced handle time and
increased quality
you know each cohort got better and better and better because people just felt
supported and
you know more confident going into the role which is what anybody wants right
so that was
my first word like aha like okay this isn't just about like the feel good of it
there's here's the
results that I can then continue to get resources for this program. Awesome and
so that then led you
to becoming the global channel leader at a I would say popular tech company and
so what's your
superpower in this why from customer service and you know that team building
and the operations
that you built why did you get led into the partner and like channel side of
things and
what was that inspiration to push you into that area and or you know again that
superpower that
you have that made you a good fit for that kind of role. That is a great
question and it's one of
my favorite stories because I think it highlights you know my genuine concern
for people and really
wanting to make the working environment for the people that I'm you know
responsible for
the best it can be and having curiosity so once again I started out a pipe
drive managing a
support team I opened their floor to office they had that time did not have an
office presence in
the US so we opened that office it was all new team members and so hiring the
right people first of
all and then helping them you know get into this role and I was learning along
the way and I like
to remove friction because that's to me is what operations is all about right
so as soon as you
start seeing friction you know where's this friction coming from and one of the
biggest frictions that
support folks had was with partnerships they didn't understand it which is you
know common they didn't
understand it and I didn't either so I just started digging into that friction
and getting to know
the people who were already in the partnership team understanding what they
needed from support
what their partners needed from support and it was uh it just it became a
project of its own
and in the doing of that project I ended up in front of Patrick Paul who was
the former VP
and those conversations of like hey here's how I think we can make this better
happen to uh I think you you talk about increasing your what is it your surface
of luck
for opportunity you know where those things meet yeah the luck surface area so
my curiosity in
wanting to help make remove friction for my team and then consequently remove
friction for the partner
team happened to coincide with the head of that department moving on to a
different department so
there was an opening and you know I guess in that conversation with Pat he was
like hey I think I
have an opportunity for you if you're you know if you're interested and yeah so
that's how I
moved over into heading up the program and channel operations of hype drive
following my
curiosity in trying to remove friction nice and you are clearly solving a pain
for the team that
you are initially working with where you know they either again didn't have the
understanding or
the operations in place to best assist you know clients and partners and you
know themselves in
that interaction and so that's that's very unique I would say because I you
know I haven't heard
too many stories about support teams or service teams that are so aware of
partners that they
experience these problems it's usually of course you know sales and marketing
and maybe success
as well but support is a very unique place to identify a challenge in the
business and then from there
grow into into the role so you've adopted the idea of nearbound and I think it
's safe to say that
you really enjoy the the concept and so where does this fit into where does
nearbound fit into
all of this for you so you know you've been doing this for a while and you know
you've had this
curiosity and then you learn about nearbound what does it mean to you and how
does it play into
all of this in your interactions so I'll kind of step back to the scenarios
that I've been talking
about one of the core things for me is just listening right being present
because I think we've all
been in a situation where somebody was listening to respond like to to waiting
for their moment to
interject what they already wanted to say versus really listening to you and so
that was a skill
that I have cultivated and that's why nearbound I feel like I connected so
deeply with it because
in order to do nearbound you have to genuinely care about people and you have
to be listening
you're not going to know how to connect these other opportunities or have the
relationships right
I think one of the things that I enjoyed most so like kind of going back to me
jumping into
channel as you said like pretty unique to come from support and jump into that
role and I'm really
a lifelong learner I just love to learn so I was looking for resources and then
I went to a in partner con in Soljared and got down the partner hacker track
and just you know
PLX summit and that like all resonated with me because it was just giving
vocabulary to how I
already operated in my world and helping me to to understand the ecosystem and
understand channel
and then and take what I already felt good good at and strong at and putting
those pieces together
in a impactful way that would have you know like a network effect of just
relationships and and
outputs and sales and you know people trusting you because they know you
understand their problem
and you build a reputation of delivering and saying no to things when it's not
the right thing
like oh I don't have this answer but here's somebody that does so yeah I feel
like nearbound
was just a very natural progression for me because it just aligned with my core
values
yeah and in the business world I feel like it can easily get lost this idea of
relationships and
being present and actively listening because you know and I think of the modern
state of sales where
a seller is probably very stressed to hit their quota and all they truly know
is maybe the old
playbook and they're going to try those tactics because that's all they know
they don't want to
think about anything else because they're probably too stressed so when they
try and
receive the information from the prospect and I don't have data for this but I
can only imagine
that you know 80 percent of sellers are somewhat falling flat on their face in
terms of active
listening and making sure they're truly understanding and listening to
understand and then bringing a
solution that actually helps versus having their own desires and drive get in
the way of what they
say next or how they move the interaction forward and I think that's probably
one of the primary
challenges that a lot of sellers have when adopting a partnerships mindset and
thinking about oh well
we can't solve this but our partners can and they don't always have that light
bulb moment and it's
not to say that you know they're incompetent or anything like that it's simply
one the playbook
wasn't given to them previously because it's still being built and two the
economic climate is just
so stressful that I imagine it it makes it even more challenging to be present
because it already
requires some mental resources for that and so I would agree that the words
near bound from what
you said it resonates and the whole ethos of it is focused on that idea that we
're all kind of
already living through of this you know being present and actively engaging and
trying to deliver
value and generate genuine relationships because I think we all felt the pain
of what happens when
we don't build those genuine relationships it becomes you know the the trope of
the corporation
that doesn't care about their employees or you know their customers and the CEO
just gets paid
you know more and more and they lay off people and all of that so I mean that's
still gonna happen
you know in the in the market and whatnot but I think we as individuals who are
in this interaction
are feeling that and trying to trying to change that and so I think the with
that same vein the
idea of a business trying to grow at all costs and truly be the you know growth
engine that their
advisors and investors all want it can you know at scale potentially lose the
the whole I guess core
reason a business exists which is serving the client and making money while
doing it so I think
there is an evolution happening in the partnerships and channel space and that
evolution is focused
on not just having quality relationships with partners and the people that we
work with but also
really making sure that it is operationally sound and also driving what that
business
needs and wants which is the the growth and so the the narrative in the market
like I started
the episode has been you know there's the relationship partner person and the
operations
partner person and so which would you say you lean more towards because you
know when I think
about you from what I know about you I don't know how to to you know classify
you not that I should
per se but like what would you say you lean more towards is it operations or
relationships
well it's really tough because I love them both but if you're gonna force me to
choose
I would say relationships because operations would be irrelevant without them
right you wouldn't even
need an operation if you didn't have a customer really you know some some
relationship that you're
protecting that you're trying to grow and I'm just a people person I think by
by nature
so yeah I would I would say relationship I really like the sentiment that you
just mentioned there
where you were talking about how you know there's if there is no relationship
there are no need for
operations and I think that's a very important piece to understand because
if we only focus on operations then it does become that you know lifeless
corporate business
interaction which people are tired of and they don't want to engage with that
you know if they're
spending eight plus hours a day and having their identity blended in with the
workplace which is
happening much more often in modern times they don't want it to feel like it's
in inputs and
outputs they want to feel like there is a relationship there and I would
venture to say that operations
help to enhance a relationship and what I mean by that is you know I talked
about clear
communication and you know having a step-by-step procedure if you are creating
this environment
where there is clarity and we both know the direction that we're heading in
then it's going
to be easier to engage and it's going to feel seamless and effortless and we
can
focus more let's say on that relationship side of things and we'll also be
getting work done which
is going to be important to both of us and then you know we both don't fall
into that trap that
sellers fall into where they you know again are so stressed that they can't
even focus on the
customer's world and so I like that that there's this blend of the two because
yes you need to
develop relationships but you need to know how to action those relationships
and so
what are some of those operations that you would say more partner people need
to focus on let's say
they're the relationship type and they're trying to make these relationships
work together between
their businesses what kinds of operations should they be thinking about more of
in terms of you know
generating revenue or generating value for end clients well this is a little
bit of the scenic
route but I'll give you a couple examples one one of the things that that I
focused in on early on
was you know partner account managers I know they're called different things
different places but
in order for them to be able to be present and focus on quota and the things
that matter to them
there's operational supports that need to happen so one of the things that that
we did was
really educate the operational team on how the sales team was measured how the
partner
channel managers were measured and then have that sales mindset I think it's
really important that
the operational folks have a bit of the sales mindset like understanding that
if it's at the
end of the quarter your partner account managers may not be as responsive
because they need to be
focused right understanding that if you are responsible for CRM hygiene and
automations and
such like you know what are your partner account managers doing administr
atively manually
that could be automated so by having those conversations by listening by
understanding
what makes someone else's work easy you know you can implement that and then on
the partner front
you know this is where listening really and I'm probably going to say
some some things that my people don't want to hear but it's the truth we create
these
great programs right but if they are not if you're giving partners things that
they don't want
or value it's not going to incentivize them to the behavior that you're trying
to incentivize
so that like that's first and foremost and then the other thing is I have seen
where programs are
designed you know somebody have this cool idea these tiers we're going to give
them this this this
and this right but if you do not have a good operational foundation to execute
on the program
your program is only as valuable as your ability to execute so I could go on
and on like there's just
you really have to look 360 and that that's why having partnerships baked into
your organization
is the route to success because when you try to duct tape them onto the side
then you don't have
the tools and the you know the company buy-in and the resources I'm pretty
passionate about this
topic because you know the old saying stuff rolls downhill right so if you don
't have that
operational support and you're not supporting partners customers are not
getting a good experience
either neither are you know the relationship between your partners and your
sales team like it all
you know it all goes together and so you have to think ahead and take that
pause and really
do your due diligence do your little listening tour uh minimally understand
where your friction
points are because people will tell you follow the friction you know what
people say they're
frustrated about that's you know that will lead you to uh your most you know
list of priorities
operationally and that you'll have plenty to do you'll never run out of things
to do if you listen
to people yeah there's uh there's already so much to do as a partner person and
if you're focusing
on the right things then you're gonna of course move the needle and uh what
came to mind you mentioned
that was um how in certain tools there's like you can gamify and give partners
points that they can
maybe redeem and you know some partners might care about that but that's
probably not aligned
to their overall business goals that they actually do care about like it's not
a nice to have it's
it needs to be a need to have and then they'll start taking action within the
partnership so I
completely agree there um so what would you say is your claim to fame um with
your work at pipe
drive are there one or two examples you can share about the impact that you had
maybe a project
that you implemented or um you know an impact of on revenue or efficiency and
onboarding or whatever
it is what is that claim to fame that you would say this is what I'm most proud
of uh from working
with the pipe drive team. There are so many I I'll I'll narrow it down to um I
think the first
impact coming into the the partner team was really just going back to like what
the partner
account managers needed was looking at the recruitment process and the onboard
ing process
and we were able to reduce that time by more than 50 percent just by
implementing
uh some automations with the CRM making sure that you know the assets were
aligned with the goals
of the partner account managers so that was that was a good investment of time
of really going
piece by piece you know stage by stage and looking holistically at that process
and that was you
know a team effort I think when you hire the right people and then you leave
them alone you know
the subject matter experts and you let them do their job so uh I take credit in
that I that I
gave the space for that to happen right but this was like really a team effort
um so that I think
and then we instituted a partner advisory council and where I feel like my my
part in that um
apart from coordinating the event and and and the administrative piece was
getting the right
people that partners wanted to talk to and product is always at the top of that
list because
and and it's such a win-win so we talk about you know nearbound and
relationships and
I think nobody wants to feel sold people feel good when it's you know like that
you don't mind
giving something when you know like you're getting value right so the partners
would come to whatever
the location was and we would have like a two-day event and bring the product
team in because the
product team would get this amazing intelligence if you want to improve your
product talk to your
partners because they know what your product can do what it can't do what it
needs to do you know
what it should do and they might even be able to tell you like how you know how
to solve it like
these partners really dive deep into these tools and they're a wealth of
information so listen to
them and that and creating this environment not just where there was a lot of
talking but um and I
think this is a key of of operations is that the actionable points so we would
have the conversation
you know the the product VP would come in and lead segments and we did
workshops but then at the
end of it it's like you have all these ideas okay partners let's vote if you
only had like two votes
of what you want to see on this roadmap and they would you know they would mark
it and then it would
be like transparent to everybody this is what you said this is what you agreed
these are the most
important things and then the product team could go back and then to see that
on the roadmap it wasn't
just um a strengthening of trust with the partners imagine the impact to
customers who the partner was
working with seeing that their partner had an impact on the roadmap that
improved their business
output like I would say hands down that's probably like my most favorite uh
accomplishment that I
got to be a part of facilitating that's awesome that is the gold standard in my
opinion of partnerships
because your partners will then be more incentivized to engage because they're
they feel heard they
also know the value much better because they were the one that gave the idea
which was likely
inspired from the customers world that they know and it's related to the world
you know your partner
and so they're going to be much more inclined to be aligned with that value and
therefore bring it
to their customers because they simply just understand it more so lots of
benefits there I love that
I think more people should be having these partner advisory boards and I think
it's if it's not being
activated within the partner program it's a big missed opportunity because like
you said yeah
there's so much valuable input that you can gain um so just wrapping up here we
are going to move
on to the tactical takeaway what is the one daily or weekly practice that you
either recommend to
others or you would say has helped you be successful and it's something that
people can implement
again daily weekly right after they listen to this episode what is that
tactical thing that you did
that you feel helped I would say um on a weekly basis trying like if today's a
meeting day to the
best of your ability try to have meetings and tasks separate so if I'm in
meetings all day I could
focus on listening because despite every you know people want to say they're
great multitaskers the
reality is we we really aren't we do best for ourselves and for others when we
're present in the
moment and we're listening and we're focusing so separating that and then in
the scope of meetings
it can be easy to just talk and talk and talk don't let that meeting go without
having an
actionable takeaway and then you know and a time frame to follow up I think
that was that alone was
probably the single thing that multiplied results not just for me but for the
teams that I worked
with being the person on the call to say great point what's the takeaway and
then at the end of that
making sure that it's like okay who's owning this action what's the time frame
for this like
you know relationships are valuable but if you don't have that tactical
um clear ownership and time frame and action then you will not move the needle
and you'll
just keep having to have meetings we've all been there about the same thing and
it's like if if
everyone owns it nobody does so uh that would be my my single valuable most
valuable takeaway
I love it I've written about that before um you know people are busy if you don
't have a clear
next step they're you know good conversation probably but they move on to the
next one and then
they immediately forget because they don't know what they're doing when they
need to do it by how
much of a priority it is so I love that I uh the viewers or audio listeners may
not have seen me
nodding my head but it was I was like a bobblehead because I was like yep yep
this is this is it
that's one of the best things that you can do because that's going to move the
needle
Karina thank you so much for your time and your wisdom this was another episode
of the Howdy
Partners podcast and of course go implement the tactical takeaways from today
and we'll see you
on the next episode